Despite the perceptions diet drinks are a better option than regular sodas, all sweetened drinks are bad for your health, according to new research.
Drinking more than two soft drinks a day is associated with a higher likelihood of early death, and drinking more than two servings of artificially-sweetened soft drinks is linked to a 26% higher risk of premature death, according to a JAMA Internal Medicine study published Wednesday that sampled 451,743 people from 10 European countries.
One of the study’s authors, Dr. Amy Mullee, professor at the University College Dublin Institute of Food and Health, wrote to the Washington Examiner that the results don’t necessarily mean that drinking soft drinks cause early death, but rather that there is a link. “There are other factors which may be behind the association we observed,” she said. “For instance, high soft drink consumption may be a marker of overall unhealthy diet.”
Even diet drinks, those that are artificially sweetened with low- or no-calorie chemicals, such as aspartame, stevia, or sucralose, are tied to gastrointestinal diseases. Sugar-sweetened soft drinks, or non-diet drinks, were associated with Parkinson’s and cardiovascular disease.
Researchers did not only focus on sodas. They define the drinks as “low calorie or diet fizzy soft drinks,” “fizzy soft drinks, eg cola, lemonade.”
The study comprises the largest sample size for a study of health risks due to soft drinks to date, having collected data from people from Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. It was also long-term, with data recorded from 1992 to 2000.
Over the eight-year period, researchers found that both men and women were more likely to face early death if they drank soda. Although they cannot say for sure whether obesity contributes to mortality risks, they say that results “may suggest” that people can experience fatal effects independent of weight and body mass index.
Their findings, however, contradict earlier studies that saw a huge jump in risk factors for women compared to men. A March study in the journal Circulation found that women who drank more than two servings per day of a sugary drink had a 63% higher risk of early death compared to women who drank them fewer than one time per month. Men who drank at least two servings of sugary drinks had a 29% increase in risk.
Despite the correlations found in the JAMA study and myriad other studies, researchers cannot point to a single cause for premature deaths. They say it is impossible to pinpoint whether deaths are due to a certain chemical in artificial sweeteners or weight gain from drinking soda, for example.
“We made statistical adjustments in our analyses for [body mass index], smoking habits and other mortality risk factors which may have biased our results, and the positive associations remained,” Mullee said. “Additionally, we saw similar associations in people smoking and non-smoking and among lean and obese participants … However, we cannot rule out the possibility that these factors were influencing our findings, hence why we cannot say the associations we observe are causal.”
Low-calorie food and drink trade groups went on the defensive, as they have following past studies connecting artificial sweeteners with health risks.
Robert Rankin, president of the Calorie Control Council, said that low- and no-calorie sweeteners have been proven to help with weight management and have “long safety record.”
“This study paints an inaccurate picture of the important role of these products for consumers,” Rankin said.
